A Microsoft outage has disrupted email services at the British High Commission in Georgetown, prompting officials to advise the public to make contact by telephone while the problem persists.

In a statement on Friday, November 13, the High Commission confirmed that its email systems were affected but said telephone services remained available and the Consular Global Response Centre was continuing to function.

The diplomatic mission also took a lighthearted approach to the disruption, announcing that an emergency meeting had been convened to discuss the way forward.
“After careful consideration the High Commission has decided to put the kettle on,” the statement said, accompanied by tea and British flag emojis.

Despite the humour, the High Commission reassured members of the public that they could still access consular assistance by telephone.

The wider outage began on Thursday, November 12, affecting Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Teams, Exchange Online and the company's artificial intelligence assistant, Copilot.

Businesses and government agencies across several countries have reported disruptions, with some users unable to send or receive emails or access their accounts.

At the height of the disruption, outage-monitoring website Downdetector recorded more than 130,000 reports of Outlook problems in the United States alone.

Microsoft said the problems were linked to unexpectedly unavailable servers, which placed additional strain on the remaining infrastructure.

By Friday morning, the company reported progress in restoring services, although some users continued to experience intermittent access problems and delayed emails.

Microsoft said there was no indication that the disruption was caused by malicious or cyber activity.

The full extent of the outage's impact on other organisations in Guyana remains unclear.